The blue light of the stun gun danced across Shiina Hiyori's fingertips, making the smile at the corner of her mouth seem all the more sinister. Lin Yuan took half a step back, his lower back hitting the icy filing cabinet. Its metal edge dug painfully into him. This was the first time since his transmigration that he had felt real fear—the other person not only knew his secret, but spoke of "transmigrators" as if it were perfectly ordinary.
"When did you start watching me?" He forced himself to speak, while his right hand crept toward the pen in his pocket. It was a tactical pen he had "borrowed" from Katsuragi Kohei's desk last week, its tip coated with anesthetic.
"Watching you?" Shiina tilted her head, her silver hair slipping over her shoulder. "The alarm in the monitoring room went off when you teased Karuizawa with that 'postpartum care for sows' bit." She suddenly pressed closer, the stun gun nearly touching Lin Yuan's Adam's apple. "You know, every classroom in this school is equipped with a brainwave monitor, and you..." She licked her lips. "Your brainwave frequency is exactly the same as that of the transfer student who fell to his death six months ago."
Lin Yuan's pupils contracted. Memories cut through his mind like sharp blades. On the day of the entrance ceremony, he had seen a faded cordon in the corner of the Old School Building. A security guard had muttered, "Another poor kid who had a mental breakdown." So even before he arrived, this body had been hiding a fatal flaw.
"Clink—"
The crisp sound of metal hitting the floor broke the deadlock. Shiina instinctively looked down, and Lin Yuan took the opportunity to flick his pen at her. The anesthetic needle grazed her earlobe and embedded itself in the wall. As the girl stumbled backward, he snatched up a folder from the floor and hurled it at the stun gun.
"Crash!"
Paper documents scattered through the air. Lin Yuan slammed into the ventilation duct's grille and crawled inside. Shiina's mocking laugh came from behind him. "It's no use. Every exit has facial recognition installed. You—"
Her voice suddenly cut off. Through a gap in the duct, Lin Yuan caught sight of something unbelievable: a glowing blue barcode had appeared at the back of Shiina's neck. She stood frozen like a puppet with its strings cut, her pupils dilating into a dull, lifeless gray.
The next morning, Lin Yuan stood in front of a vending machine. The sound of a can of coffee rolling down made his temples throb. He had spent forty minutes crawling through the ducts the night before, finally escaping through the ceiling of the swimming pool's changing room. Spiderwebs still clung to his shirt, but what concerned him more was the anonymous message that had just arrived on his phone:
"Come to the third greenhouse during lunch. It's about your missing system."
The greenhouse was heavy with the damp scent of plants. The moment Lin Yuan lifted the plastic curtain, he froze. Ichinose Honami was crouched among the orchids, her uniform jacket casually draped over a chair. A brand-new electronic patch showed at the back of her neck, identical to Shiina Hiyori's barcode.
"I knew you'd come." She turned and smiled, her fingertips brushing the dewdrops on a flower petal. "Don't be nervous. It's just a cognitive correction device." When Lin Yuan remained silent, she suddenly untied her collar ribbon, revealing a hideous stitched scar beneath her collarbone. "The car accident three months ago wasn't really an accident."
Lin Yuan finally understood what the files meant. The so-called "social experiment" was a plan to turn problem students into perfect vessels. Because Ichinose had shown extraordinary empathy during a mock exam, she had been labeled "Sample E-047." Shiina Hiyori, meanwhile, was the cleaner assigned to eliminate those who awakened.
"The 'Primal Personality' you saw is our instinctive defense against brainwashing." Ichinose handed him a tablet. His brain scan was displayed on the screen, an eerie red light pulsing in the hippocampus. "As for your system... it isn't malfunctioning at all. The Chairman simply blocked it with an electromagnetic pulse."
Lin Yuan suddenly remembered the sting at the back of his neck during the entrance medical exam. The so-called vaccine chip was actually the real shackle.
"Why are you telling me this?" He narrowed his eyes.
Ichinose suddenly grabbed his wrist, her grip astonishingly strong. "Because you're a variable!" A nearly crazed hope shone in her eyes. "In last week's math test, you used an advanced Chinese formula to solve the problems, right? No such algorithm exists in this world, so..."
The greenhouse door burst open. Horikita Manabu led a stream of Student Council members inside, a tablet in his hand playing footage from the basement surveillance cameras the night before. "What a pity," he said, adjusting his reflective glasses. "Experimental subject E-047 and anomaly A-000 are now under arrest for violating school rule 39."
In the special detention room at dusk, Lin Yuan gazed at his reflection in the one-way glass. His system interface suddenly flickered. Amid the broken streams of data, a line of blood-red text appeared:
"Host personality integration at 91%. Initiate Final Protocol?"
A heavy thud suddenly came from the next room. Through the vent, he saw Ichinose curled up in the corner, sparks of blinding electricity bursting from her electronic patch. The girl silently mouthed, "They're... going to format..."
Lin Yuan gritted his teeth and pressed the confirmation key deep in his consciousness. Agony pierced his skull like steel needles as countless fragments of memory surged into him—the days and nights Ayanokoji Kiyotaka spent training in the White Room, the late nights Chinese otaku Lin Yuan spent binge-watching anime, and the figure in a fox mask whispering in the void: "So-called perfect humans are nothing but..."
"Bang!"
The detention room door was violently smashed open. Karuizawa Kei stood backlit in the doorway, holding a fire axe. Ryuen Kakeru followed behind her, his face dark with gloom. "Don't get the wrong idea!" She kicked the guard at her feet aside. "I just can't stand someone else destroying this school before I do!"
A piercing alarm suddenly blared from the end of the hallway. The Chairman's icy voice came over the PA system. "Attention, all students and staff. The emergency purge protocol is now being activated."
Lin Yuan looked out the window. The sun was sinking, and a brand-new interface appeared across his retina. Above a bright blue progress bar, the words stood out:
"Personality reconstruction complete. Loading Combat Module."
Before you continue